Circumnavelgazing the Mystery of the Self

Yesterday we spoke of conversion, which is obviously a kind of transformation, but again, of and to what? 

Clearly something changes but something remains, since you're the same person as before. However, some may emphasize that a "new person" results -- i.e., like a change of form -- while others may feel that this is the person one was intended to be -- more a teleological way of looking at it. 

Such an experience generally doesn't occur randomly, but is provoked or awakened by something exterior -- a person, a book, an experience of some kind. But there's no way of knowing whether the conversion would have eventually occurred anyway, or by other means, since we can't replay our lives.  

I think we can agree that it can't merely be an organic development, i.e., a result of inevitable growth, as from infancy to childhood to adulthood. I don't buy any of those "stage theories," which are only models, not the thing modeled. Besides, "salvation" or "redemption" can't be stages, if only because they are a consequence of grace, not nature; no amount of (→) results in (↓). You just can't get there from here absent a vertical / celestial intervention.

I suppose conversion can occur when (→) or (↑) meet (↓). The  (→) + (↓) combo is interesting, because this would correspond to a horizontaloid person who is neither looking for nor desirous of the transformation (or transformer), rather, it just happens. 

I'm thinking, for example, of Dave Brubeck, who essentially woke up Catholic one morning after a musical dream. Although a self-described religious nøthing, he was commissioned to write a mass, which he thought was finished, so he went on vacation and was just taking five in bed, when

"I dreamt the Our Father,” Brubeck says, recalling that he hopped out of bed to write down as much as he could remember from his dream state. At that moment he decided to add that piece to the Mass and to become a Catholic.

Bʘʘm. 

He has adamantly asserted for years that he is not a convert, saying to be a convert you needed to be something first. He continues to define himself as being “nothing” before being welcomed into the Church (http://www.godgossip.org/article/dave-brubeck-jazz-giant-and-convert-to-catholicism-from-nothing).

Dion DiMucci also comes to mind. He was a heroin addict, 

using drugs for about 15 years, from 14 to about 28. In 1968 my friend Frankie Lymon died of an overdose and I got on my knees, said a prayer, and I haven’t been the same since. I haven’t had a drug or a drink for 52 years.

Bʘʘm.

Of the time prior to this, he writes of being 

a millionaire before I was twenty years old, self-made up from poverty, and I was pretty impressed with myself. It was the typical rock-star attitude. The truth, however, is that I was living in darkness, falling deeper into the black pit of myself and my hungers. I’m one of the lucky rockers who lived long enough to learn I was wrong, and that’s a grace in itself (https://www.ncregister.com/features/dions-spiritual-journey).

After 1968 "He wasn’t much of a regular churchgoer," but "did begin praying on a regular basis." Then, a decade or so later, "he had a vision that changed his life":

“I was in a 12-step spiritual recovery program for about 11 years, and I believed in God. But I said a prayer: ‘God, it would be nice to be closer to you.’ Suddenly, my world opened up. I had a vision of Christ and who he was and what he can do and why he stepped into history.

“It changed my life; I’ve never been the same. Ever since that experience, I’ve never had to doubt my self-worth ever again.”

Bʘʘm².

Which brings us back to Bailie and The Apocalypse of the Sovereign Self. This whole question of "self" is probably tied for second on the list of Biggest Mysteries, the first being God, the next two being Man and Cosmos, the rest being #4 or lower. 

In fact, I think we should knock Cosmos down to third place, since I have Transcendental Thomist tendencies, startled as I am by the Mystery of Subjectivity (whereas a traditional Thomist would begin at the other end, with the senses). In any event, remove the self from the cosmos and there are no mysteries at all, what with no one here to enjoy them.

Mystery. One of my favorite words:

The soul is fed from what is mysterious in things. 

Even in the immensity of space we feel caged. Mystery is the only infinity that does not seem like a prison.

We are saved from daily tedium only by the impalpable, the invisible, and the ineffable.

When the authentic mystery is eclipsed, humanity becomes drunk on imbecilic mysteries.

The honest philosophy does not pretend to explain but to circumscribe the mystery. 

Mystery is less disturbing than the fatuous attempt to exclude it by stupid explanations.

Happily, the world is inexplicable. (What kind of world would it be if it could be explained by man?)

That which is incomprehensible increases with the growth of knowledge.

The world is a system of equations that stirs winds of poetry. 

 Our most urgent task is that of reconstructing the mystery of the world. 

Urgent. We'll get back to that subject later.

Back to the mystery of the self. Pulling my old psychology hat from the closet, it is well understood that the self has a kind of bipolar (at least) structure, in that it inevitably seeks out models to emulate and assimilate (or assimilate via emulation). How is this not becoming someone other than who we are?

Well, proceed cautiously! Look at all the people imitating other mentally ill people who think they're not the sex they self-evidently are. I admire Margaret Thatcher, but only up to a point.

If we are mimetic creatures who are inevitably going to imitate someone, be careful who it is. Certainly be careful about the parents you choose, since they'll be the first models.

Now I'm thinking of Heinz Kohut's theory of psychological development, in which we come into the world with a proto-self that is oriented to grandiose-exhibitionistic needs and to the longing for an omnipotent or idealized figure, often fulfilled by mother and father, respectively. 

But it doesn't end there, because this process never really stops, only the objects change. Come to think of it, you could construct your autobiography around the succession of such "selfobjects." Tell me who you admire -- and wish to be admired by -- and I'll tell you who you are. 

Well, we didn't get far into the book, but what's the rush? We'll get there.